January 23, 2010

The 32nd Annual Science Fiction Marathon

Evangelion 1.0 is FREE and sponsored by the MIT Anime Club. District 13: Ultimatum is a FREE SNEAK PREVIEW.

Admission to all paid shows is $8, and drops to $5 after Moon. Tickets will be available for purchase when doors open at 5:15 pm. After District 13: Ultimatum, 26-100 will be cleared. Paid audience members can leave their belongings and will be re-admitted at this time.

The 2010 Marathon features six full-length films, many short subjects, and a special selection of refreshments, including pizza! Pizza preorders will be available after Evangelion: 1.0 and District 13: Ultimatum.

Evangelion: 1.0 is FREE admission, sponsored by the MIT Anime Club!

There was no foreseeable warning before it happened -- a catastrophe of unparalleled scale and magnitude overwhelmed the entire globe. This event, recorded in history as "The Second Impact," caused half the population of the Earth to perish and devastated the world. All that remains of Japan is Tokyo-3, a city that is now being attacked by giant creatures that seek to destroy mankind. These creatures are called Angels. Fourteen year old Shinji Ikari is called to Tokyo-3 by his father who he hasn't seen in more than eight years. He is asked to come to the NERV headquarters to meet his father. His father reveals to him a gigantic humanoid weapons system that the special governmental agency has secretly developed to fight the Angels and then orders Shinji to pilot the giant artificial human Evangelion Unit One. With the fate of the world resting on his shoulders, how will the 14 year old boy Shinji fight? What is the truth behind "The Human Instrumentality Project," an operation somehow related to the "Second Impact"? And who is the true enemy? The Angels, NERV, the mysterious SEELE, or the demons held within the hearts of the people involved? Gendo Ikari, a man who holds many answers to these questions, watches silently and attentively as his son fights a desperate battle... [www.apple.com]

District 13: Ultimatum is a FREE SNEAK PREVIEW of the full-length feature film!

The loud, intense, and explosive parkour action saga District 13: Ultimatum is a sequel to the 2004 European blockbuster District B13. This second installment was directed by Patrick Alessandrin but initially gestated from the vision of writer-producer Luc Besson, also responsible for scripting and producing the first go-round. Ultimatum unfurls three years after the original, in the slightly dystopian realm of suburban Paris, circa 2013. Ultra-violence now riddles that sphere -- to such a degree that cops have imposed a lockdown on the area, to little avail. Significantly, the neighborhood is also formally subdivided into ethnic enclaves, including Arabic, Asian, Caucasian, and African. As the tale opens, a crack team of rogue cops pulls off a police assassination inside of the district, prompting the police chief (Daniel Duval) to try to persuade the president (Philippe Torreton) to bulldoze the area and let the cops cash in on the turf's real estate value. In response, two of said rogues, Damien (Cyril Raffaelli) and Leito (David Belle), hit the streets, guns blazing, and exude all of the force at their disposal to save the region from complete obliteration. [www.allmovie.com]

An astronaut miner extracting the precious moon gas that promises to reverse the Earth's energy crisis nears the end of his three-year contract, and makes an ominous discovery in this psychological sci-fi film starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey. For three long years, Sam Bell has dutifully harvested Helium 3 for Lunar, a company that claims it holds the key to solving humankind's energy crisis. As Sam's contract comes to an end, the lonely astronaut looks forward to returning to his wife and daughter down on Earth, where he will retire early and attempt to make up for lost time. His work on the Selene moon base has been enlightening -- the solitude helping him to reflect on the past and overcome some serious anger issues -- but the isolation is starting to make Sam uneasy. With only two weeks to go before he begins his journey back to Earth, Sam starts feeling strange: he's having inexplicable visions, and hearing impossible sounds. Then, when a routine extraction goes horribly awry, it becomes apparent that Lunar hasn't been entirely straightforward with Sam about their plans for replacing him. The new recruit seems strangely familiar, and before Sam returns to Earth, he will grapple with the realization that the life he has created may not be entirely his own. Up there, hundreds of thousands of miles from home, it appears that Sam's contract isn't the only thing about to expire. [www.allmovie.com]

At the heart of this you've got this fantastic concept and a fantastic performance from Rockwell. It's absolutely tense. It's absolutely admirable.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp -- Margaret Pomeranz, At the Movies. Read this review.

GREETINGS STARFIGHTER! YOU HAVE BEEN RECRUITED BY THE STAR LEAGUE TO
DEFEND THE FRONTIER FROM XUR AND THE KO-DAN ARMADA.

Trailer-park teenager Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) regularly escapes from his humdrum existence by playing the video game Starfighter. His expertise at this recreational endeavor attracts the attention of affable stranger Centauri (Robert Preston). Before he knows what's happening, Alex is whisked by Centauri into the outer reaches of the galaxy! It turns out that the Starfighter game is being played in deadly earnest in outer space, and that Alex is expected to join Centauri's Star League, then do battle with the wicked Kodan forces. Alex's principal ally is the lizardlike Grig (Dan O'Herlihy). His great rival is the traitorous Xur (Norman Snow). The contrast between Alex's earthbound life as the son of single-mother Jane (Barbara Bosson) and his new position as Starfighter is daunting at first, but soon the boy is manning a spacecraft and zapping the baddies as though he's been doing it all his life. [www.allmovie.com]

One of the few successful Spielberg clones, administering the usual routine of aliens and mouth-agape wonder with friendly determination and a perfect, just perfect, game boy screenwriting hook.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp -- Brian Orndorf, BrianOrndorf.com. Read this review.

Things have barely settled from the excitement and resolve of the original Back to the Future, when in pops that crazy inventor Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) with news that in order to prevent a series of events that could ruin the McFly name for posterity, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox ) and his girlfriend are whisked into the future to the year 2015, where Marty must tangle with a teen rogue named Griff, who's obviously the descendant of Biff, the first Future film's bully. Marty foils Griff and his group when he jumps on an air-foil skateboard that flies him through town at rakish speeds with the loser bullies beaten again. Marty gets a money-making brainstorm before hopping in the time-traveling DeLorean, and he purchases a sports almanac. He figures that back in 1985 he'll be able to place sure-fire bets using the published sports scores of the games that are yet to happen. Unfortunately for Marty, Dr. Brown disapproves of his betting scheme -- he feels too much messing with time is very dangerous -- and he tosses the almanac. A hidden Biff overhears the discussion about the almanac, sees it get tossed out, and grabs it. Thus begins a time-traveling swirl to make the head spin. Biff swipes the DeLorean, heads back to 1955, and with the help of the unerring almanac, bets his way to power. The now-altered "Biff world" has turned into a nightmarish scene with Biff the mogul, residing in a Vegas-styled pleasure palace and running everything. It's all our hero Marty can do to pull the pieces together this time, as he must jump between three generations of intertwined time travel.
[www.allmovie.com]

Back to the Future deserved a chance to come back, especially under the cheerful, enterprising, mathematically minded stewardship of Mr. Zemeckis and Mr. Gale. Their new film isn't an ordinary sequel. It's as if the earlier film had been squared.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp -- Janet Maslin, New York Times. Read this review.

Heroic earthling Flash Gordon saves the world from the nefarious Ming the Merciless in this lavish, intentionally campy adaptation of the famous sci-fi comic strip. The story is as basic as space operas get: Ming (Max von Sydow) has developed a plan to destroy the Earth, and Flash (Sam J. Jones) and his attractive companion, Dale Arden (Melody Anderson), are called upon to stop him. Along the way, Flash must battle Ming's goons and the temptations of a luscious space princess. [www.allmovie.com]

Laughably bad and fantastically good all at once, this is a guilty pleasure that everyone can enjoy.
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp -- Adam Smith, Empire Magazine. Read this review.